Ok, so I’m happy running Leopard on my MacBook – and I love Spaces! What fun it is to whip through several different desktops and avoid window-clutter! Not to mention the eye-candy coolness of watching your screen slide around! But I came across a dilemma the other day… I have a second monitor and I wanted to be able to use it with one software consistently, while I switched applications on my laptop screen – how can I manage that? Spaces pairs both monitors as a single space and switches them together. I, however, want to keep BibleWorks 7 visible (in VMWare Fusion) on my external display while I rotate through my word processor, blog editor, and web browser on my laptop. The solution? Easier than I thought…

Open System Preferences and go the the Exposé & Spaces panel. I’ve already assigned certain applications to certain Spaces (Firefox in 1, Office in 2, Mail in 4, iTunes in 5, Adium IM in 6), but now I assigned VMWare Fusion to “Every Space” and dragged the application to the external display. Now when I switch Spaces to bounce from an email to a document to a blog post, BibleWorks stays up on my external monitor because it’s visible in “Every Space.” Now, I’m not sure I’m going to want it visible in every space when I’m away from my desk and second monitor (in fact, I know I’ll want to re-assign it to Space 3), so I guess I’ll have to change that setting when I switch. Maybe I can do something clever like write an AppleScript and assign it a shortcut key in Sparks… But I’ve never done that before, so I’m open to suggestions if anyone has one! If I do come up with a script, I’ll post it here.